The Gujarat High Court today asked the state government to appoint one more Additional Information Commissioner (AIC) within two months.
The direction came following a PIL filed by RTI activist Praful Desai seeking a direction to fill up vacant posts in the office of Chief Information Commissioner (CIC).
A division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi ordered the government to fill the post of one AIC within two months.
On April 13, the government had told the court that two posts of AIC have been filled.
In December 2015, the HC had ordered the state government to fill three posts of AICs to clear the backlog of appeals pending before the government under Right to Information Act (RTI) based on Desai's PIL. But the government had filled two posts, leaving one vacant.
Desai approached the high court again seeking its direction to the state to fill up one vacant post at the earliest.
In his original PIL filed in 2012, Desai contended before the court that due to the vacant posts in the office of the CIC, the number of RTI appeals pending before the CIC was growing.
